Adoption Awareness Month: Last Day!

Learn or teach about positive adoption language.

I've been noodling over a post about this anyway, since we occasionally get a comment that uses negative adoption language. Someone recently said S was "pretty close to being mine" because she came to us at 2 days of age. I assured her that S was well and truly ours, legally and otherwise.

I'll admit I'm not always as consistent as I should be with certain terminology. So here we go. This information is derived in part from information provided early in our adoption by our agency.

The words we choose say a lot about how we really think. Using positive adoption language means choosing words that show respect for all participants in the adoption (birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoptees). Using positive adoption language can help validate adoption as an option to build a family, just as birth is. Both are important, but one is not better than the other.

• Birthparents should be described as such. Using the term real parent or natural parent implies that the adoptive parents are imaginary, or artificial.
• Mom, Dad, or parent are fine, and don't need to be preceeded by "adoptive". There are certain situations where it is germane to conversation, but not usually.
• Birthparents don't abandon, relinquish, or surrender their child, or put their child up for adoption. Birthparents make an adoption plan, just as some biological parents make a birth plan. Birthparents are actively involved in the decision to place a child for adoption, and their involvement should be reflected in the language we use. And you can only imagine how an adoptee feels when someone says their birthparents abandoned or surrendered them.
• My adopted child is my own child, just as much as any biological child would be.
• S was adopted (vs S is adopted). I'm guilty of this every so often. The point of this type of language is to emphasize the fact that, while adoption is a part of her life, it's not the end-all and be-all of her life. She may have been adopted, but she's also tall-ish, has blue eyes, and loves bananas. As I've mentioned before, this is one of the fine lines I struggle with. I want adoption to be part of her life and something to be a positive thing, but I don't want it to define her.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 29

Collect donations for waiting children and their families for the upcoming holiday seaason.

Not quite the same, but our agency had a gift card drive to provide gift cards to birthfamilies with children at home. We were happy to be able to contribute this year.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 28

Light a candle for your or your child's birth parents.

We will definitely do this over dinner tonight.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 27

Hitting the home stretch!

Donate clothing, books, and toys to Family and Children's Services.

We have a small bag of newborn clothes we have collected to donate to our local maternity house. Now if I can just get them to answer their phone...

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 26

Keep positive thoughts for those with currently pending adoptions.

This has been on my mind lately. As I've mentioned, I participate in a lot of message boards, and one has to do with adoption. There are a few gals on the board who have been waiting quite a while for a match, some enduring multiple matches that fell through right before or right after the child was born. While we had an amazingly quick, positive adoption experience, we have to remember that not everyone does.

And there are those who are in the midst of the foster-adopt process who have a child in their home but are waiting patiently for their adoptions to be finalized, which in some cases can take years. During that time, there is always the worry that their child may be returned to their biological family. Which in some cases is for the best, but can cause great sadness for all involved.

So for those of you waiting for your forever child, know that we are thinking about you, not only today but every day, until your child comes home.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 25

Spend this day enjoying your family

No problem!
Pictures to come...

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 24

Begin a lifebook for yourself or your child.

DD has a baby book chock full of stuff that is updated as much as we can add to it!

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 23

Attend a local adoption support group

Our closest group is an hour away, and apparently they meet sporadically. Might be worth it to see if they're getting together soon.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 22

Invite your local media to cover adoption events

Our local media already has!

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 21

Encourage your children to share their thoughts and feelings about adoption.

Probably not the best age to ask S about her thoughts and feelings about adoption, but we'll keep this in mind as she gets older.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 20

National Adoption Day! Support your local adoption community by attending a ceremony.

No ceremonies in our area, but I do hope the court where we finalized S's adoption is having a mass finalization day today. We'll be thinking of all those who are finalizing their adoptions this week!

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 19

Volunteer at a local maternity home.

That's a bit of a challenge with S, but we do have a local maternity home, and we're donating some of S's newborn clothes to them.

Adoption Awareness Month, Day 18

Mentor foster children close to "aging out" of the system.

I'm not sure we're in a position to do that right now, but it is something to keep in mind.

Which reminds me, our local news station did a story in honor of Adoption Awareness Month yesterday. A couple in our area just adopted a 16-year-old girl from the foster care system. Her adoption was recently finalized, and the station interviewed the whole family. They were so happy!

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 16

Watch an adoption-related movie with your family.

I saw The Blind Side, but J hasn't seen it yet, and I think he's like it. Maybe we'll table this until my parents are in town and we can all watch it together.

Oops

Falling behind on Adoption Awareness Month, so today's a double entry.

Nov 13: Look into becoming a foster parent
Nov 14: Celebrate your family by beginning or catching up on your scrapbooking

Fostering is something J and I have tossed around in the abstract, but we don't feel like we're in the position to be foster parents at this point. However, I do have friends who have gone the foster or foster/adopt route, and have found it very rewarding. This is a shout out to those of you foster parents. You know who you are, and you rock.

So, scrapbooking. Something I used to do on a fairly regular basis, but it's been a long time since I got out the fancy paper and the decorative scissors. We've made shutterfly albums of S, but nothing formal in the way of scrapbooking. Maybe I'll get cracking on that this week. If I can put the knitting and crocheting down long enough...

Adoption Awareness Month, Day 11

Make a family tree that includes both adoptive and birth children. This solidifies that it doesn't matter if one has different birth parents; he/she is still an important and loved member of your family.

We may have to pass on this one. We have an adoptive child, and no birth children. But I think it will be a fun idea when S is older to put together a family tree showing both her adoptive and birth family. We even have pictures of some of her birth family, and we're looking forward to sharing them with S so she can appreciate all the people who love her so much.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 10

With your family, brainstorm and create a new family tradition. This doesn't necessarily have to be adoption-related. It can be a new tradition for the upcoming holidays, or a family summer tradition after school has ended. The important thing is to continue growing closer as a family.

This could be kind of fun. S is experiencing her first year of everything: Easter, summer vacation, Celtic Classic, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, etc. I'm sure we could come up with something that's a new and unique tradition. We've discovered a new town in New England that perhaps we'll try to visit every year.

For some reason I'm thinking we may come up with a charitable donation in S's name, possibly something adoption-related, but I'm not sure yet. I'll keep you posted.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 9

Have a get-together with all members from all sides of the adoption triad. Enjoy the company, and give each person the opportunity to share his or her own personal experience with adoption.

I'm not sure if this means getting together with all members of our adoption triad (us, S, and S's birthfamily), or just member of the triad in general (adoptive parents, adoptee, birthfamily). In any case, we are sending S's birthmom a letter this week hoping we can get together soon. We don't know any other birthparents, so this will be our opportunity for all the members of our triad to get together.

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 8

Ask your employer into looking into adding adoption benefits to your existing benefits. If your employer currently does not offer any type of benefits, encourage a large, local business to offer adoption benefits to their employees.

We are very, very fortunate to have this covered. Both of our companies offer generous adoption reimbursement benefits, and the benefits at J's company are twice what my company offers. He works for a large company, and several people who adopted lobbied for the benefit. As a matter of fact, J started filing the paperwork just last week!

But an even bigger benefit, at least in my opinion, is to have a maternity leave policy in effect for adoptive parents that is on par with biological parents. Again, I was very, very fortunate to have a maternity leave policy that didn't distinguish between adopting and giving birth. So many women I see on adoption message boards have no maternity leave policy for adoptive parents, and have to go back to work after a matter of a few short weeks.

So if you're in HR and you're reading this, look into having these benefits at your employer. Thanks!

Adoption Awareness Month: Day 7

Bake cookies for all the adoption professionals who helped you through the process.

This might be tough, as our adoption professionals are anywhere from an hour to 2 hours away from us, so we'd have to send them, etc. I am baking cookies today though (not going well--don't ask). And we're thinking of sending a thank-you to our social worker for all of her hard work.